


Red Numbers, Flashing In The Dark

by ScorchedAlpine



Series: Whumptober 2019 [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Red Hood/Arsenal (Comics), Under the Red Hood
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Explosion, Flashbacks, Jason Todd Has Issues, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, M/M, Past Character Death, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Whump, Whumptober 2019, alarm clocks, fears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:27:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22822534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScorchedAlpine/pseuds/ScorchedAlpine
Summary: (Whumptober Prompt #2, Explosion)Jason Todd, and his unconventional fears.
Relationships: Roy Harper & Jason Todd, Roy Harper/Jason Todd
Series: Whumptober 2019 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1638682
Comments: 9
Kudos: 119





	Red Numbers, Flashing In The Dark

Jason hates alarm clocks.

Less of a hatred and more of a fear, really. It’s a weird, incredibly specific thing to be scared of. But that little bit of self-awareness doesn't make him not have a reaction to them. The mind doesn’t care if you know what you’re afraid of is stupid; it’s called an irrational fear for a reason. Except his isn’t all that irrational if you thought about it.

Analog clocks don’t bother him. There’s no terror in the slim hands ticking away. He’d have a pretty big problem if they did, considering the entrance to the Batcave to the Manor was a freaking grandfather clock.

If you knew nothing about him, you might think it was the irritating noise the things screeched out. The blaring shriek that always disrupted what should be peaceful sleep, making anyone that heard it want to clap their hands over their ears and curse out the world in their own personal ‘who dares to disturb me?’ moment. Nobody liked them, but pretty much no one was scared of them.

Red numbers.

It was the red numbers. Flicking down, down, down until he died. And he’d be too late, and Jason would die in pain and alone save for his traitor of a birth mother. Full of regret and anger and ‘I’m sorry’.

He’d wake up in a guest room in the Manor because his childhood bedroom was a tomb, and if they tried to drive after that beast of a patrol there was a chance it would end in a fiery wreck. Having rolled over in his sleep, and coming face to face with glowing numbers in the darkness. Stiff and digital and merciless. They’re ticking forward instead of backwards, way slower than his death countdown had ever been, but it doesn’t help to ease the cold dread that takes hold of him. Ice in his spine.

Jason blacks out staring at it, every muscle seized with terror and the phantom metal tang of blood on his tongue. Ghosts of hideous laughter ringing in his ears until it’s all he can hear.  
Echoes of pain that he’d gone through years before aching in his chest, his legs, his head. Forehand or backhand, Jason? Which hurts more?

After sitting there for what felt like hours but in reality was only a few minutes, something in his heart shifted in the span of half a second. Tension mounting until it snapped like rock in a fault line. He’d woken Roy up, leaping out of bed and yanking the glowing clock off the nightstand before pitching it at the wall as hard as he could with an animalistic scream.

He’d taken a sick satisfaction in the way it shattered. A dent in the drywall as it exploded in a hail of metal bits and shards of plastic, mechanical carcass hitting the hardwood with a sharp ‘thunk’. A scattering of pieces they’d clean up in the morning.

And then he’d gone back to bed. Didn’t have to explain himself because the person next to him already knew. Jason and Roy curled into each other, close enough for him to catch the faint scent of the orange-blossom shampoo in the archer’s hair. Natural, like puzzle pieces that never had to be forced as they held each other.

Ignored it as Bruce snuck up to the outside of the door, waiting. Listening for a minute or two to make sure before the shadowy presence lurking in the hallway disappeared back from whence he came. And neither of them would mention it in the morning, pretending like it had never happened in the first place.

Strangely enough, Jason wasn’t scared of fire. Never had been. In fact, he’d been a bit of a pyro as a kid. Pretended the ember at the tip of his cigarette was some mythic thing, flaring with life every time he took a drag.

Burning scraps of paper in the alley to watch them eat themselves alive on the filthy, cracked asphalt. Lighting fires in trashcans to keep warm during the winter he nearly froze to death back when he’d lived on the streets.

The heat at his back of a warehouse as it exploded, a pile of drugs that would buy a few decent mansions and a hundred overdoses going up in flames. A red-orange glow that infected the darkness of the sky with its brightness, hungry and wild and demanding. Fiery destruction for the cause, because if it went any other way then some of it would have ended up on the streets no matter what.

Funny, that he’d be so spine-chillingly terrified of the countdown to the thing that killed him and not the thing itself. Like his brain had decided to pick and choose the ingredients that had been shoved together to make his death. He could watch an explosion happen before his eyes. Feel the heat of the flames warm his skin. But put a digital clock in front of him and he’d lose his shit.

He remembered the exact moment he died. In some twisted form of fate, it was a way he would have wanted to go out. In a blaze of glory. Take away the pain, the fear, and he might now have been as upset about the way that he'd died.

He could watch Roy wire an explosive arrow, smell the tar-like scent of C4, run through a burning building, but put an alarm clock in front of his face and the world felt like it was ending. Because it’s always so much worse when you know you’re going down, and you have to watch as the numbers tick your life away.

Tick, tick, tick, down because he’s too late to save you, she doesn’t love you, and you watch as Death levels the cold steel of her scythe at your neck. Feel your lungs grind against broken ribs as you wait, feeling far too young and too old at 15-going-on-16. So much worse when you have to wait for the arrival of the thing that’s going to kill you.

Boom.

**Author's Note:**

> Day 2! Liking this a lot better than the first one. Keeping this short, as I've got 2h of homework to do in an hour and a half... yikes.


End file.
